Grade 8 Creative Writing: Ten Model Compositions

Ten model compositions of about a hundred and twenty words. At this level the paragraph starts to matter: one to set the scene, two or three for what happened, and one to close. A pupil who can plan four paragraphs before writing has learned most of what a composition needs.

The grammar widens a little - was walking, had already gone - but only where the meaning needs it. There is no new vocabulary a Grade 8 class would have to look up.

It rained for three days without stopping. On the third night my father did not sleep. He kept going to the gate with a torch to look at the canal.

At about two o'clock he woke us. The water had already come into the garden. We carried the television, the rice bags and my grandmother's medicine to the upstairs room of our neighbour's house.

By morning the water was above the door handle. We watched our chairs move around the sitting room.

The army came in a boat at eleven and took the old people first.

We lost most of our furniture and all my books. Nobody in our lane was hurt.

When people ask about that week, my father only says we were lucky. I did not understand him then. I do now.

My grandmother fell in the bathroom on a Tuesday and broke her hip. We went to see her the next evening.

The ward was long and full. There were forty beds and the fans were not enough. A baby was crying somewhere near the window.

My grandmother looked smaller than at home. She was wearing a hospital dress and her hair was not combed the way she likes it.

She asked whether I had eaten. I said yes. She asked again after five minutes.

My mother combed her hair for her before we left, and she closed her eyes while it was happening.

Outside, the visitors sat on the wall and waited for the bus in the dark.

I had never thought about how many families are worried on the same evening.

My cousin sat the Grade 5 scholarship examination last year. I watched the whole thing from close by, because she stayed at our house.

She went to a class on Saturday morning, another on Saturday evening, and a third on Sunday. In the week she did papers at night.

By September she knew every kind of question. She also stopped playing.

One evening I found her crying over a paper because she had got thirty-eight out of fifty. Thirty-eight is a good mark.

She passed, and everybody was very happy, and my aunt cried at the temple.

I am glad for her. But I remember the evening with the thirty-eight, and I think somebody should have told her that it was enough.

My grandfather has an old radio. It is brown, it has a broken dial, and it is older than my father.

Every morning at half past five he switches it on for the news. He does not turn it loud because the rest of us are sleeping.

Last year the radio stopped working. My uncle brought him a new one with many buttons, and my grandfather thanked him and put it in the cupboard.

Then he took the old radio to a repair shop in the town. The man there said nobody makes that part any more.

My grandfather waited two months. The man found the part somewhere.

Now the news starts at half past five again. My uncle still does not understand it. I think I do.

Our classroom walls were grey and marked, so our class teacher asked the principal for permission to paint them.

We collected money for four weeks. Everybody gave something, and two pupils whose families could not give money came on both Saturdays instead.

The painting was harder than we expected. The old paint had to be scraped first, and the dust made everybody cough. My shirt was ruined.

One boy painted a large blue line at the wrong angle near the door. We argued about it for ten minutes and then left it.

On Monday the whole school came to look through our windows.

The line is still there, slightly crooked, above the door. Our class knows exactly who painted it, and we are not telling anybody.

My friend Dinesh and I did not talk to each other for eleven days.

It started over something small. He told the class that I was afraid of the dark, which was true, and everybody laughed.

I said something worse about his family in front of four people. He went very quiet and walked away.

After that we sat in the same row and looked at different walls. Our friends took sides. At interval I ate alone and pretended I wanted to.

On the twelfth day his sister was ill and he had no money for the bus. I gave him mine.

He said thank you. I said sorry. Neither of us said anything about the eleven days.

What I said was worse than what he said, and he forgave me first.

A brown puppy came to our gate in the rain last August. It was thin and it had a wound on its back leg.

My mother said no. We had no money for a dog and my little brother is afraid of them.

I gave it some rice behind the kitchen, which my mother saw and did not mention.

The next day the rice was on a plate near the step. The day after that there was a piece of fish in it.

On the fourth day my mother washed the wound with warm water and salt while I held the puppy still.

Nobody in our house has ever said that we have a dog. He sleeps under the bench at night and his name is Rocky.

We left school at four in the morning in two buses. Half the class slept and the other half sang.

Sigiriya is higher than it looks in photographs. The first part was steps, the second part was more steps, and then there were the iron stairs on the side of the rock.

I was afraid there. I held the rail with both hands and did not look down. Our sports teacher walked behind me and talked about cricket the whole way so that I would keep going.

At the top the wind was very strong and you can see for many kilometres.

Coming down took half the time.

I remember the view. I remember the teacher talking about cricket more.

There is one mobile phone in our house and it belongs to my father.

During the online classes my sister and I used it together. She has Grade 11 and I have Grade 8, and our classes were sometimes at the same hour.

We made a timetable on paper and stuck it on the wall. It worked for two weeks. After that we started arguing, and my father took the phone to work on Thursdays to stop us.

My sister needed it more than I did. I knew that, and I still argued.

This year we are back in school. The timetable is still on the wall and nobody has taken it down.

Some of my friends had no phone at all. Nobody made a timetable for them.

In the dry season the tap in our lane runs for two hours in the morning and nothing comes after that.

My job is the water. I take two buckets and a plastic can to the tap at half past five, and I make three journeys before school.

The queue is the same people every day. The old man from the corner house always tells me to go before him and I always refuse, and then I go before him.

The buckets are not heavy at the tap. They are heavy at our gate.

In June the rain came and the tap ran all day. My mother filled everything in the house anyway, because she does not trust it.

I did not miss the queue. I missed the old man.

• Ask for the four-line plan before the writing. Situation, what happened, what happened next, how it ended. Ten minutes on the plan saves twenty on the writing.
• Mark the paragraph breaks in one model together. Ask why each one falls where it does. Most weak compositions at this level are one long paragraph.
• Point out the past continuous when it appears. I was walking home when... is the single most useful pattern for a story, and it is worth one lesson on its own.
• Insist on a real ending. Not "it was a memorable day" - something that answers the story. Every model below does.
• Read two aloud and compare the openings. Which one made you want to hear the rest, and what did it do?